Meditation is not a means of forgetting the ego; it is a method of using the ego to observe and tame its own manifestations.

We are looking for a way to feel more real, but we do not realize that to feel more real we have to push ourselves further into the unknown.

Desire is a teacher: When we immerse ourselves in it without guilt, shame, or clinging, it can show us something special about our own minds that allows us to embrace life fully.

In building a path through the self to the far shore of awareness, we have to carefully pick our way through our own wilderness. If we can put our minds into a place of surrender, we will have an easier time feeling the contours of the land. We do not have to break our way through as much as we have to find our way around the major obstacles. We do not have to cure every neurosis, we just have to learn how not to be caught by them.

Meditation is not a means of forgetting the ego; it is a method of using the ego to observe and tame its own manifestations.

There is a yearning that is as spiritual as it is sensual. Even when it degenerates into addiction, there is something salvageable from the original impulse that can only be described as sacred. Something in the person (dare we call it a soul?) wants to be free, and it seeks its freedom any way it can. ... There is a drive for transcendence that is implicit in even the most sensual of desires.

The picture we present to ourselves of who we think we ought to be obscures who we really are.